What’s Your Identify?
by Albert Jung
Style: Nonfiction / Language
ISBN: 9791199003217
Print Size: 238 pages
Reviewed by Warren Maxwell
A outstanding dive into how Han’gŭl can be utilized to pronounce, articulate, and be taught different languages
“The Previous Testomony mentions that 42,000 individuals have been killed for not announcing the sh sound in Shibboleth accurately.”
What’s Your Identify? units out a transparent path for harnessing a helpful pronunciation device. Highlighting the quite a few conditions in life, giant and small, when right pronunciation is each important and arduous to attain, this e book proffers the Korean alphabetic system of Han’gŭl as a multipurpose resolution for studying and transcribing sounds no matter linguistic system.
Developed within the fifteenth century by a king bent on growing literacy in his inhabitants, Han’gŭl is an deliberately versatile means of transcribing sounds on paper. Its fashionable kind has been tailored to prioritize the Korean language, however this writing system nonetheless stands out for an emphasis on the mechanical means sounds are produced within the mouth and are linked collectively. There are 5 fundamental symbols that correspond to sounds made by shifting components of the mouth, as an example the tongue and molars, and eleven letters together with three fundamental symbols, for the linking-sounds that may be roughly correlated with Latin vowels.
“Han’gŭl is designed to symbolize sounds based mostly on how they’re produced and the character of these sounds. The shapes of the symbols are designed to evoke the act of creating the sound and its properties.”
With its emphasis on Han’gŭl as a sensible device, this e book retains historic narration and information to a minimal and as a substitute focuses on making a system for the novice to be taught Han’gŭl. There’s neither want for a background in Korean language or tradition, nor to be taught something about it with a purpose to use the Korean writing system. The e book’s three central chapters supply crash programs in fashionable Han’gŭl, the extra versatile historic Han’gŭl, after which a last chapter that synthesizes the 2 and emphasizes the various hybrid configurations of Han’gŭl.
Counting on a textbook-like effectivity, every chapter builds on the earlier one and makes use of numerous charts, graphs, and in-book quizzes to hone the talents being imparted. The group of all these parts makes for a studying expertise that, whereas removed from easy, is streamlined and approachable. Every web page is believed via and leads into the subsequent with seamless transitions.
“The aim is to put in writing as spoken and browse as written. Now, it’s your flip.”
Copious footnotes accompany the textual content and permit for various ranges of engagement with Han’gŭl. For probably the most half, learners can skirt round footnoted references and nuggets of historical past (they solely start to dominate the web page close to the top of the e book), whereas all that is simply out there on the backside of the web page for these seeking to enrich their examine.
The system is elegant and held collectively by the writer’s charismatic voice, which telegraphs an infectious ardour for the e book’s subject material. Though some may scoff on the usefulness of a pronunciation device as complicated as this fifteenth century writing system, Jung makes a convincing case that not solely is pronunciation a vital a part of social interactions and integration, it shops cultural reminiscence and connections to non-public identification that aren’t simply unlocked. As immigrants, expatriates, and language buffs certainly know, communication is about each studying a language and understanding how that language is spoken.
A one-of-a-kind information to pronunciation, this e book gives an environment friendly means of studying the proper pronunciation of a international phrase and a useful resource for sharing your personal language’s pronunciations with others.
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